The present disclosure generally relates to communication devices, and more particularly, to method and apparatus for reducing power consumption of a communication device.
As the requirement of transmission rate continuously increases, a communication device, such as an Ethernet device, causes more power consumption and generates more waste heat correspondingly. Therefore, the energy utilization efficiency of the communication device has become a crucial issue than ever before.
IEEE std 802.3az Standard is also called as “Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE)” (see “IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks—Specific requirements—Part 3: CSMA/CD Method and Physical Layer Specifications—Amendment 5: Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers, and Management Parameters for Energy-Efficient Ethernet, IEEE std 802.3az, IEEE, 2010”); which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. For example, in the IEEE 802.3az standard that defines Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) specification, a transceiver of the Ethernet device is allowed to enter a Quiet mode when there is no data needed to be transmitted. In the Quiet mode, the Ethernet device needs not to continuously transmit idle sequences, and thus the power consumption can be reduced.
After leaving the Quiet mode, however, the transceiver of the Ethernet device is required to complete the preparation for data receiving operation in a very short period in order to ensure the data transmission performance. Such requirement greatly increases the difficulty of designing the transceiver, so it is very difficult for the Ethernet device to achieve high transmission performance while maintaining high energy utilization efficiency in terms of circuitry design.